I am sorry you feel upset. That was not my intention.
And I did not want to steal anyone's project.

So maybe I should start by saying that she is quite upset by this perceived usurpation.

I can not share this sentiment. After I explained my intentions to @snook, including the fact that I will not go ahead with the bot if she objects and that I will be fine with however she decides, she told me that I can go ahead and do it. If she was upset, she did not let me know it or I would not have gone ahead. I thanked her and went on.

a. this is not a financial token (you will lose money) and b. the price will forever go down.

This project is not intended as a financial token. Quite the contrary. I will never sell any of the tokens nor buy them back. I do not seek any financial gain. I am actually losing money on this (token creation fee and energy consumption for running the bot code).

This is a hobby project. For me to extend my knowledge in coding and bring new features into the bot code.

To give my "test case" some meaning I wanted it to be that: a pure gesture token. Nothing financially behind it and never claimed as much.

This is a pure gesture token. And a hug is something personal. For that reason one of the first additions to the code is the restriction to how many (other) tipping commands are allowed (currently two additionally) in the same comment as the hug. That code went live today but I have not published the announcement yet.

That doesn't mean HUG doesn't have aesthetic value, I'm not an expert on that, but I probably would smile if someone gave me a !HUG.

Please smile, have a !HUG